5 in 5: digital literacy, plastic bags, window shopping, reviews, mannequins

Each week, Padilla’s Insights + Strategy team stands at the intersection of people, culture and brands to bring you five stories that you can read in five minutes.

1. Digital literacy via gaming

Google announced this week that it will be extending its
“digital safety and citizenship curriculum for children, ‘Be Internet Awesome‘,” to include instruction on how to identify “fake news” and other “false content.” Why should you care? While it is important to prepare the next generation on how to best use the internet, studies by Pew found that older adults are the most susceptible to misinformation. According to a study published in October, “younger Americans [ages 18-49] are better than their elders at separating factual from opinion statements in the news.” Another study published in the New York Times found that adults over the age of 65 shared the most misinformation on Facebook during the 2016 election. Although teaching kids to confront fact and fiction on the internet is critical, it is equally important to find ways to fill in the gaps for older, non-digital natives in the U.S. too. [Tech Crunch]

2. Shaming into being sustainable

A supermarket in Vancouver is offering customers plastic bags with “embarassing” logos printed on them to encourage patrons to bring their own. Why should you care? This is a cute and clever way to encourage people to be more sustainable. Rather than lecture people about sustainability, they’ve simply created a different incentive to achieve the same goal while also creating broader awareness around limiting the use of plastic bags. However, they’ve also noted that people specifically have purchased the bags as collectors items, so this may actually be a bit of a wash in terms of reducing plastic bag use at their store. [PSFK]

3. Window shopping on Amazon

According to a survey conducted by Business Insider, teens widely use Amazon to window shop. Why should you care? For all the time and care put into building an e-commerce platform owned by a business or into an Instagram feed to curate the right advertisement, listings on Amazon may have just as much weight in a purchasing decision for teens. As these are teens, different marketing/advertising regulations may apply, but it will be important to monitor the significance of window shopping via Amazon provided to them as they age. Overall, businesses looking to expand their reach with younger generations may consider implementing Amazon-specific strategies now based on the premise that it is used for browsing/saving/sharing similarly to social media (and not just ordering). [Business Insider]

4. Challenging the reviews

The city of Vienna has launched a new tourism campaign poking fun at poor reviews of sites and attractions. Why should you care? This is a great way to use data (even less favorable data) in a playful campaign. While people may rely on websites to help determine where to go, this campaign gives individuals a nice reminder that personal perceptions and experiences may vary. By encouraging travelers to make their own decisions about Vienna, the campaign smartly invites new conversation about their city by sparking curiosity around the contradictions of low scores at interesting, beautiful, fun, etc. sites. [Lonely Planet]

5. New mannequins in town

Nike has sparked new controversy by featuring plus-sized mannequins wearing exercise gear in their stores. Why should you care? Nike is acting as a early indicator of a trend we expect to grow over the next few years. Over the past few years, we’ve seen people rethink how we represent humanity in advertising. While we’ve seen broader diversity than ever before, this hasn’t translated to the in-store displays. As for health and wellness, we’ve seen people move away from the unobtainable, perfectionist aspirations and towards more realistic inspiration. While the mannequin saw some backlash for representing someone who is supposedly “unhealthy,” we (and others) applaud Nike for listening to consumers and showing fitness in all shapes and sizes, acknowledging that fitness shouldn’t be one size fits all. [Mintel]

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